New Staff Representative Joins Council

The College Council welcomed its newest Staff Representative, Bruce Howard, at the December 5th Council meeting. Bruce brings a wide range of union experience, skills and knowledge to the position.

Most recently he worked for PSA/AAUP, the union that represents the full-time faculty, professional staff, university lecturers and research professors at NJIT in Newark. Bruce remarked: “My time spent working alongside the Senior Staff Representative at the PSA was critical to my understanding of and my ability to respond to the host of issues and challenges that the Council’s members face. Thanks to my time there, I gained experience in grievance handling, ethics investigations, internal organizing, communications and union elections and contract ratifications.”

Bruce also served as an elected officer and negotiations committee member for the AFSCME local representing librarians and staff at the Old Bridge Public Library, where he was responsible for overseeing the union’s finances and where he also helped to negotiate two collective bargaining agreements with the library’s Board of Trustees.

He will soon be earning a Masters in Labor & Employment Relations from the Rutgers School of Management & Labor Relations. He earned his BS in the same field where his coursework and research focused on labor and employment law. There, Bruce helped to coordinate online virtual collective bargaining and negotiations exercises for students in the undergraduate Introduction to Labor & Employment Relations course.

Lastly, Bruce plans to build upon the work of retiring Staff Rep. Mark Heter: “In just the short amount of time we’ve spent together since I’ve come on board, Mark was able to bring me up to speed on the exceptional framework he has developed for the Council’s ongoing effort to engage its membership. I look forward to getting to know and to working with the leaders and membership in the Council and its Locals.”